When Carol Riley first saw the old Belvedere farmhouse her husband, Tony, wanted to restore, she flatly refused to live in it when they bought the property 20 years ago.
Instead, the couple and their two daughters moved into a smaller house down the street while Tony set to work gutting the house.
"He loves doing that," Carol said of projects such as rebuilding the home's interior. "He did a lot of it himself."
Tony called the house a historic "shell" because very little in the home is original.
"Basically, there were no bathrooms in the house that you could get to from inside the house," Carol said.
The Rileys turned the former bathroom into a laundry room. They installed a door in the wall between it and the old pantry, which is now a full bathroom that is accessible from a living area.
Tony, a local historian, has filled the house with items of local historical significance. Carol said she enjoys decorating with the antiques.
Edgefield pottery jugs line one mantle in the dining room. An original Hamburg clock sits on a mantle in a guest bedroom.
The house itself has a historical significance that attracted Tony to the property.
Built in the 1890s, the home pre-dates the trolley line, which was built in 1902.
"This was pre-trolley, pre-North Augusta," Tony said. "Later on, they ran the trolley in front of here."
A stop was located across the street from the house. The spot now adjoins a gas station parking lot.
The trolley ran from Aiken to Augusta from 1902 until 1929, stopping in North Augusta near the Hampton Terrace Hotel and crossing the Savannah River at what is now the 13th Street bridge.
After the Rileys moved in and researched the property, they discovered a significance that was even closer to home.
Carol's grandfather, Ben McDaniel, was the last living person who worked on the trolley at the time of their purchase. He died in 2003.
The Riley's have snapshots of McDaniel and his co-workers with the trolleys. Before he died, McDaniel was still able to identify most of the 17 people in the photograph. Tony gleaned some of the trolley line's history from his grandfather-in-law.
"I think what eventually killed (the trolleys) was buses and vehicles with a little more flexible schedules."
The stock market crash later that year didn't help. Neither did an accident in which a trolley car lost control and killed people.
"Between all that, they just folded up," Tony said.
Reach Lisa Kaylor at lisa.kaylor@northaugustatoday.com.
